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There are few politicians who could have inspired the sort of hope that Barack Obama did coming into office, arriving in the wake of a near collapse of the American financial system a year ago. His inaugural address raised the nation's expectations. We hoped, we looked for change, we thought perhaps we'd crossed some significant barriers in the country's history. Mostly, we looked for leadership in a time of great anxiety.

Then came a search for consensus. For reasons that have more to do with Obama's nature than with empirical evidence, the new President looked for bipartisanship in addressing the nation's dire financial straits. He took a massive stimulus bill that most economists said would be the minimum necessary to get the country moving again and split it down the middle. Obama designated slightly more than half towards job creation, largely in infrastructure; the rest he saved for tax cuts, hoping the huge giveaway might bring Republicans and conservatives into the big stimulus tent he was creating. It didn't.

Instead, Republicans voted, to the last, against the stimulus plan and lambasted the President as a socialist. They sat on their hands and dared President Obama to pass his recovery plans without them. So, without pulling the $400 billion tax cut, he did. Without offering any plan of their own, the Republican Party had succeeded in paring off almost half of the stimulus funding towards tax relief. Obama had reached across the aisle and had been rejected, even while still siphoning off a huge percentage of the job creating effect of the stimulus bill.

Then, Obama continued to treat the biggest banks with the same tenderness that the Bush Administration had already lavished upon them. His economic team made them all healthy again, with more hundreds of billions of the TARP dollars they'd been loaned at the end of 2008 now flowing into 2009— and put few restraints on how they'd spend it. They bought other banks and invested in their futures, not ours, keeping credit tight on Main Street. The boys at Treasury and on the White House economic team made sure that however unhealthy the banks' bottom lines were, the biggest of them would have the capital to do their profitable trades, at our expense.

Finally, Obama decided that, legislatively, it was most important to fulfill his campaign pledge to reform the healthcare system during his first year in office. It was more visible as a priority than fighting joblessness or enacting financial reform, even in the aftermath of the meltdown. But again, Obama thought it best to ask for a bipartisan effort to save the nation from ruin. Republicans laughed, but waited for the other shoe to drop.

All through the summer, the Republicans stalled, asking whether one compromise or another might create the critical mass. They asked to be a part of a process that might allow them to join in a circle of delight with Democrats and the President; they might, if asked nicely enough, hand the President a huge legislative victory. In the end, none of the potential compromises offered in committee made it possible to attract one Senatorial Republican. But the lengthy process had the desired effect for Republicans. The stalling allowed a complete mobilization of the insurance industry's billions and the organization of a lunatic fringe of the right— the Tea Partiers. They took to soapboxes in every town hall across the country during the summer congressional recess and shouted down Congresspeople everywhere, claiming that the nation was in the grasp of socialists and traitors. They denounced healthcare reform as the crown jewel of the socialist coup in progress.

A shaken legislature returned to deliberate through the fall on healthcare. The leadership, left without Presidential guidance to resist it, compromised further, hoping to prevent the loss of any conservative Democratic votes in the Senate. Democratic Blue Dogs were now more fearful than ever of right wing backlash, so they demanded a centrist path. Poof, away went the public option, forget about an expansion of Medicare. After almost a year, healthcare reform was stripped down to basic changes that would enlarge the number of Americans covered by private insurance, but would not threaten the private sector with competition. It passed the Senate finally, with only some differences left to be ironed out between the House version and the watered-down bill that emerged from the upper chamber.

While the legislative sausage was being made, our President thought long and hard about the war in Afghanistan, especially after the American-backed leader there tried and ultimately succeeded in stealing his country's election. Obama wondered whether his promise to escalate the conflict was still possible, whether there was a way to win a war without a legitimate government to support. Maybe they should just buy time there, hoping something might change before the Taliban overran the corrupt Karzai regime. Ultimately, his advisors split, the President was outflanked by a General who thought it best to follow the path of Douglas MacArthur, a military predecessor who had lobbied for escalation of the Korean war over the authority of President Truman. Unlike MacArthur, who was relieved of command by Truman, General Stanley McCrystal was given an additional 30,000 troops by President Obama with which to turn around years of stagnation in Afghanistan. Our brave soldiers would somehow make it work with just this small reinforcement. No one would call President Obama soft on terror, would they?

But then came along a wayward son of a Nigerian banker with explosives in his underpants on Christmas Day, attempting to explode them, along with a jetliner full of passengers over the city of Detroit. The President attempted to keep Americans calm, even as right wing talk show hosts screamed their invective over the holiday airwaves. He was still a traitor, this President. Never would the last Commander-in-Chief have let such a thing almost occur, would he? , President Bush, after all, had us all taking off our shoes at the airport after the infamous shoe-bomber's soles failed to ignite. The talk show hosts just knew that President Obama didn't have the guts to make us take off our underpants on line, did he?

No, he didn't. But President Obama did have the intestinal fortitude to undergo a painful and public self-examination over flaws in intelligence getting to the right airports at the right times. He did call his cabinet together to flail themselves over these mistakes. The President would go on television and take responsibility for not doing a good enough job. In the future, he'd make sure we were safer from crazy people who had told their families they hated America and then left home, bound for our shores. We'd certainly be getting more information on this soon.

Then there was a little special election in Massachusetts. The most liberal state in the nation would soon anoint a successor to the late Teddy Kennedy, someone who would cast the final vote on healthcare reform: Teddy's work of a lifetime. The only problem was that the woman who had been nominated by local Democrats to inherit the mantle had no interest in actually campaigning. She thought it best to take a little break from the voters during a six-week general election, making publicly known her reluctance to stand out in the cold near Fenway Park, shaking the hands of losers who were on their way to jobs they hadn't yet lost.

Those Massachusetts losers, known to the rest of us as voters, turned on Democratic candidate Martha Coakley. Many angry liberals stayed home, wishing for a candidate with some zeal for their issues and their support and the rest voted for a little-known Republican, a former Cosmopolitan Magazine nude model-turned state senator. The Republican won, offered his children up for dates on national television during his acceptance speech, then took a plane to Washington to vote against healthcare reform, which he had voted for when Massachusetts passed its own plan a few years ago. Newly elected Senator Scott Brown was now a new hero of the right wing.

No matter how bizarre, the events in Massachusetts apparently sent the country and the President a clear message. There would be no more healthcare reform without Republican support. There would be no more spending to ease the pain of the unemployed, unless it could be done in a bipartisan way and be done before next year. President Obama would then freeze spending, except for more wars, for three years. Damn the unemployed. Damn the recovery, we'd close the deficit. Meanwhile, he would fight for us. Fight, fight, fight. Oh, yes, and he would reappoint the Fed Chairman to do more of the same.

Let's ring down the curtain on year one of the Obama Presidency. Year two should be even more interesting.

We've lost Howard Zinn today. While most of the mainstream political world will have comments about a speech by the President tonight, I'm left much more affected by the reaction that we will no longer hear from the people's historian.

While President Obama delivered another elegant, yet less than progressive address to the Congress and the American people, the country won't have the benefit of one consistently honest and frank voice in response. Howard Zinn understood that, as Americans, we need to celebrate the heroism of those of people who stand up against established interests, especially when those interests oppose democracy and the rights of working people.

I'll reflect more on Zinn's legacy in the coming days. For the moment, the verbiage of State of the Union address pales by comparison to the silence Professor Zinn's absence creates. Until we can deconstruct President Obama's promises of change and hope, and compare them with the unrealized substance of his promises to working people, we will have fallen short of the tough standards to which Zinn held political leaders.

“I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president — which means, in our time, a dangerous president — unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.”

—Professor Howard Zinn

Perhaps, in remembrance of Zinn, we should apply a tougher standard to the realization of the democratic ideals the President so often invokes in his rhetoric. We might ask, "Where is the real change and hope we can believe in?"

Meanwhile, whatever the President may or may not really desire, let's take a moment for reflection on the work and life of Howard Zinn, who told the stories democracy must enshrine, not of the powerful or of the well connected, but of those who go forth, day after day, to live out the promise of government for the people, by the people, and of the people. May they not perish with Professor Zinn tonight.

American democracy has long been corrupted by the influence of corporate cash, lots and lots of it for all parties. It's led to an orgy of giveaways and an almost total lack of oversight, a belief in markets and their wisdom, and ultimately has resulted in the disastrous meltdown of 2008-9. We're enduring unemployment and foreclosures at Depression levels, lost retirements and lost hopes as a consequence. And yet, it seems, what we've endured so far is not the limit—not by a long shot.

Now, the Supreme Court, by the same one-vote majority that brought us Bush v. Gore, has struck down any limit on corporate spending to affect elections. Corporations are now people, in the important respect that they enjoy freedom of speech. The only electoral and speech difference between me and a corporation now is the corporation's ability to print their messages everywhere you look, to hire public relations consultants to massage them into your daily life and entertainment as you contemplate your votes, and to ensure that their messages get in front of you in every possible way, while my speech is confined to this blog— or a sandwich board if I prefer to wear one.

The only difference the five ruling members of the Supreme Court see between you and a corporation is that you have to go off to work every day, probably for a corporation, then pick up your kids, feed them, make sure they do their homework, pay the bills, put the children to bed, make their lunches for the next day, then get some sleep, while the corporation hires a team of lobbyists to spend their days and nights influencing the government to do their bidding. Whatever the superficial differences you may notice, the corporation is, in fact, a person, just like you, when it comes time to vote.

The only logical surprise is that the Supreme Court didn't actually give corporations the ballot. Since they define corporations as persons, why wouldn't they; why shouldn't the Court allow companies to vote, to spawn little corporations who grow up to vote when they're eighteen, and have ballots in their corporate-stamped hands on election day. But then, the majority of the Court apparently wasn't interested in logic or evenhandedness, they were interested in a result, just as they were in Bush v. Gore. The result is that there is no limit on the influence of corporate money in our political process. The Congress, brought to you by....(pick your corporate brand).

But the influence of corporate money won't be limited to the Congress, where it will be difficult to distinguish future Congresses from the one we have now, in which corporate cash calls more of the tune than the voter. No, now the influence of corporate money will be clear on the state, county, and local level too. Your City Council, brought to you by Your Local Bank. Your Zoning Board, brought to you by The Company That Wants a Variance. Your School Board, brought to you by The Company that Wants a Private For-Profit Education System.

Welcome to the brave new world of the right wing's very own Supreme Court. The first thing we'll be seeing as a result of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a flood of money to defeat banking reform— and President Obama himself if he has the courage to stand behind it. Expect a congressional midterm election campaign like no other this year— brought to you by Wall Street.

How out of touch was Martha Coakley's campaign? Here's a stunning bit of information, dated well after polling began to show that the Brown campaign and the stealth effort by Tea Party activists had chipped away at Coakley's lead:

Last Thursday, after the White House awoke to the danger, Mr, Axelrod called Mr. Newman, a senior advisor to Ms. Coakley, to ask what the White House could do to help; he was assured, as Mr. Axelrod later related the conversation to associates, that things were well in place and that Ms. Coakley was wary about getting any more operatives from Washington.

Today's piece by a team of NY Times reporters tells the tale of how the Coakley campaign was caught napping in a sort of reverse battle of Lexington and Concord. Everything we've been saying here about the witlessness of her strategy is confirmed in interviews with insiders from both sides in a good postmortem of the Massachusetts Senate slaughter.

Two other interesting election notes that should be pointed out:

1) Several bloggers have made mention of the message Rep. Michael Capuano took back to the House Democratic Caucus in December, after losing the primary to Ms. Coakley in a beauty contest that was all about name recognition. Capuano told incumbents that "You're screwed," referring to the deep anger he had encountered among Democrats over unemployment and the escalation in Afghanistan during the primary campaign.

To this point, it can't be overstated how important lower turnout among Democrats was in the Massachusetts special election— and how a lack of enthusiasm among them essentially made the difference.

To amplify the message about jobs, Capuano related an episode from a meeting he had in one Massachusetts town, where local officials urged Congress to provide funding on the basis that it be used to employ people:

He asked one crowd if it thought that a town could start hiring people within a month if it was given a million dollars on the condition that it begin employing people-- the crowd was certain it could.

After the event, a top finance official from the town approached him. "Not only could I do it in 30 days, I could do it in a week," she said.

2) A great map of town-by-town results in Massachusetts shows how vital Capuano's observation was (check it out at this link), but also points out a wierd phenomenon. The western part of the state went heavily for Coakley. Across the board. This was true in the rural areas, as well as in the lefty Pioneer Valley towns of Amherst and Northhampton, which one would have expected to go Democratic. Someone in the Coakley campaign was doing their job— and it would be great to understand this data better.

However the Massachusetts Senate race turns out, it should be clear that the Democratic candidate, Martha Coakley, has brought a world of pain on herself and her candidacy. Her campaign was run so pathetically that in local parlance, she's known as "Chokely." No matter that the Senate campaign has moved into national view as a repudiation of Democrats, Obama, liberalism, Keynesian economics, and the post-meltdown end of conservative rule, the underlying fact is that it should never have been close in the first place.

To start with, Coakley won a short primary campaign almost completely on name recognition against some lesser-known candidates with only local bases. Stronger Democratic candidates stayed away from the race, thinking that Joe Kennedy (Teddy's nephew, not Joe Kennedy the Libertarian, who IS actually running) would ultimately step in to take the seat in a walkaway. Coakley wasn't tested in any way by the primary, since she had money to run ads and was the only statewide officeholder among the Dem. choices.

Then, having won the primary, Coakley seemed to assume the seat was hers. She made less campaign stops in a six-week general election stint than an express train, seeming to forget the basic lesson of politics: the candidate works for the people. Coakley actually dissed retail campaigning when questioned by the press about why she didn't get out more, making it seem like she thought it was beneath her. Her media was horrible, at best making it seem as if she was running for town selectman or prosecutor, and later, at worst, like her opponent was some sort of barbarian who needed to be caged.

Coakley also ran away from the Kennedy image and family, at just the moment in Massachusetts when Ted Kennedy's memory was at its glossiest. She had to awkwardly accept the embrace of the Kennedys only a week before the election, when it was clear that she would lose badly without them. It appeared almost as if Coakley, like Al Gore spurning Bill Clinton in 2000, thought it more important to win on her terms than to win at all.

Meanwhile, Scott Brown, having been given the Republican nomination as almost an offering, like a human sacrifice to the political gods, took the opportunity for all it was worth. Most think he really intended to set the stage for a later run at statewide office, but whatever his own thinking, he grabbed the chance to set an image for himself and ran with it. Brown posed on television in front of his GMC truck and took a folksy, down-to-earth approach to media that spoke to the average person, not down to them. He eschewed big words, big government, and set himself up as an everyman underdog.

In short, Brown did all the right things in a moment when voters wanted to express their outrage at the elites who run things. His issues were out of step with the voters, but his media stressed his personal characteristics and sold him as an independent thinker, not as a right winger. Brown went everywhere and met voters personally. He was seen to look vigorous, athletic, personable, and concerned. He ran against "the machine," portraying the Democrat Coakley as part of a monolithic party-based elite that needed to be sent a message.

As the race tightened, Coakley made a number of public errors and gaffes, from discounting Brown's chances to win, to saying that maybe devout Catholics shouldn't work in emergency rooms-- in response to a talk-show host's question about Brown's support for a religious opt-out from supplying emergency contraception for rape victims. She even called Red Sox hero pitcher Curt Schilling, a Brown supporter, a Yankee fan. Coakley looked out of touch and came across as unemotional and dour, seeming irritated with being questioned on her campaign strategy and unanswerable to the public.

On the positive side, Coakley's issue stances were well reasoned and clear. Unlike Brown, Coakley didn't shade her statements to obscure her opinions and record. But her campaign wore like sandpaper on the public. Even at the end, when Coakley sprinted through the last two weeks, she seemed not to enjoy the give and take. If she survives to win, it will only be because the issues mattered to more Massachusetts voters than her campaign and her diffidence.

Massachusetts Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has been the beneficiary of a superficial look at his political history, since until around two weeks ago, he wasn't even given a chance of becoming the next Senator from the Bay State. Now that media attention has turned towards him, a series of statements and positions at odds with the genial, GMC truck-driving independent persona Brown has created in his campaign have begun to surface. Whether this information will be pivotal in deciding whether the surge for Brown in the polls continues or crests is anyone's guess at this point.

What is becoming clearer by the day, however, is that Scott Brown hasn't always been the friendly, reasonable personality he's been working the cameras as. Beyond the conservative stands he made with the Republican minority in the Massachusetts State Senate on more than 90% of votes, Brown's distance from the extreme right is called into question by his 2008 comments on television about President Obama's (then candidate Obama) parentage. In a live commentary during which he was defending Sarah Palin from comments about her daughter Bristol's pregnancy out of wedlock, Brown said, "Quite frankly, Barack's mom had him when, when she was eighteen years old..."

Brown was interrupted by another panelist, who commented, "... and married."

Brown then continued, laughing, "Well, I don't know about that, ha ha... but more importantly, (then segued back to Bristol Palin)..."

This comment seems to place Brown in the company of right wing conspiracy theorists who claimed Barack Obama was some sort of plant from Kenya, a meme that was common among the far right during the 2008 campaign. In 2009, Brown has kept his distance from Palin, realizing she is kryptonite in Massachusetts.

This time, before he was regarded as a serious contender, Brown kicked off his Senate campaign by taking a "no new taxes" pledge, lining up with the Republican leadership on opposing the stimulus package, and opposing healthcare reform in a state which already has a similar plan. His espousal of tax cuts, opposition to a Wall St. bank levy, and Tea Party-style economic positions is all well to the right of most Massachusetts voters, but his economic platform has been less examined than his opposition to "the machine" and his shots at President Obama's response to the meltdown as "big government."

Will Brown get a pass from Massachusetts voters, who are looking to show their anger at the status quo? We'll know by Wednesday morning.

The Senate's 60th vote for healthcare reform and the rest of the Democrats' agenda rests with the people of Massachusetts on Tuesday. They are choosing between a dry but steady prosecutor who made her name as a specialist at putting away child abusers and a flashy State Senator whose makeover from Republican to independent maverick has been accomplished in weeks through a savvy media campaign.

Martha Coakley ran a campaign designed around Massachusetts' enormous Democratic registration advantage: she evidently initally thought she'd bore the voters and win on the numbers without much of a thrill. Her sound bites grated, but conveyed her positions without a twist. She was a matter-of-fact-attorney turned Attorney General. Not much charisma there.

Meanwhile, Republican Scott Brown busied himself turning his record around for a state that didn't know his name to sell a projection of a truck-driving guy in National Guard fatigues with a winning smile. His media portrayed a man of the people for "the peoples' seat." He buried his opposition to the state's gay marriage law, his support for allowing medical personnel to opt out of emergency contraception for rape victims, and his lonely characterization of waterboarding as legitimate interrogation. In short, he created a likable character without ties to anyone currently in power during a bad season for incumbents and the well-connected.

Brown also enjoyed the full-throated support of the Tea Party movement, of the Fund for Growth, and the American Future Fund, who saw his campaign as a place to draw a line over taxes, government spending to stimulate the economy, and healthcare reform. Their ads for Brown began to soften up a lackadaisical Coakley campaign early in the going. Right wing talk radio adopted Brown as a standard-bearer as well.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts voters looked for a way to show their anger at the status quo of high unemployment, Wall Street's recklessness, and a stalled healthcare reform package that staggered through Congress as the country's economy teetered through 2009. The special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat seemed an opportunity to vent an inchoate rage at the system. Everyone knew people suffering from the wreckage of the meltdown (or was such a person) and few thought the government had done enough to help.

So Scott Brown's handlers figured out that the image of independence and allegiance with the Tea Party movement could bring out angry voters while Martha Coakley was slowly putting the mainstream voters under with a personality like anesthesia. After a speedy six-week campaign, he emerged as a viable candidate in the late stages of a special election which initially promised to attract a tiny turnout. The large independent portion of Massachusetts voters were breaking his way and conservatives were already highly motivated to get out to the polls.

Coakley has run her campaign without much elan. Her answers tend to be direct, sometimes overly complex, and she strays into controversy when simplicity would be more appropriate. Her speaking style has been likened to that of a prosecutor during debates with her opponent. She has been slow to energize voters and reluctant to connect emotionally on issues she legitimately believes in. In short, Coakley has not electrified, even once she began running a campaign that recognized there was a real race going on.

Like Al Gore in 2000, Martha Coakley seemed intent on winning without tying her coattails to the biggest political attraction around. In her case, that obvious partner would have been the Kennedy family. Coakley's primary campaign veered away from the Kennedy history and until this week, her general election bid was unadorned by the most popular Kennedys— Ted's widow Vicki and his well-known nephew Joe, a former Congressman. The prosecutor turned state Attorney General appeared to believe she could take the Kennedy's seat without genuflecting before them.

That's all changed in the past week, since the polling showed Coakley's substantial lead evaporating like snow in a winter thaw. Now, Vicki Kennedy's warmth and concern for her husband's legacy is being broadcast all over the Bay State in a 30-second ad, entitled "With Her." Joe Kennedy is stumping for Coakley and raising money for the campaign. The Kennedy family is fully engaged in attempting to keep Ted's life's work for a national health plan alive by keeping the 60th Senate seat in the Democratic column.

The campaign has taken on a national profile, but for Massachusetts voters the special Senate election has a local cast. Even with President Obama arriving today to campaign for Ms. Coakley, it's an open question whether voters will view their ballots as a referendum on his Presidency. If they do, it should bode well for the Democratic candidate; the state gave Obama over 61% of its total in the 2008 election.

The other important uncertainty is turnout. Democrats have not been as motivated this season as they were in 2008. Healthcare reform has not moved quickly and the Senate left off the critical public option feature progressives worked for. Many changes Democrats supported have not materialized and economic suffering has continued through 2009. Special elections usually feature a precariously low percentage of the registered voters getting out to the polls. Recent national focus on financial reform may help that Democrat, but whether progressives will rally around Coakley and get to the polls is an open question. The GOTV operation will be critical for both sides in a state where there is not usually a close race in national elections.

Another odd twist to the Massachusetts Senate campaign will center on a Joe Kennedy almost no one outside of the state knows: Joe the Libertarian. An information technology executive by the same name as Ted Kennedy's nephew is polling at around 3% as the candidate of the Libertarian Party. Who he'll draw more votes from— and whether those pulling the lever for him will even know who they're voting for is anyone's guess.

Massachusetts will make January a critical political month for the midterm campaign. In true Bay State tradition, it will be election-as-blood-sport and feature a cast of characters both real and fictional, and personalities large, small and almost invisible. The latest polls are a little too close to call. And now that the campaign had become nationalized, the result, either way, will be seen as a bellwether, like it or not.

A tax on bank debt and a tax on large bonuses to bankers sounds about right as a way to recover the public's investment in the financial system— and a way to participate in the tremendous upside our investment has provided to the bankers running the financial companies. The tone-deaf cries from financial CEOs that they will cut back on loans if the debt tax goes through only makes it more certain that the public will demand it. And a tax on banker bonuses is better focused than clumsy attempts to limit pay. It also puts some of the bonus money in the public's coffers instead.

One hilarious reaction came from JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who thought it was unfair that the tax would only apply to banks with over $50 billion in assets. He wasn't so concerned with getting a huge share of TARP money and his ability to buy up WaMu as a result, but a tax on his windfall, that seemed inequitable. Dimon had just described the financial crisis to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission as, "something that happens every five to seven years. We shouldn't be surprised."

If it turns out that the banks help finance stimulus in this way, maybe we can even get unemployment under control before several more years go by. Wouldn't that be lovely? I'm not holding my breath that this will be anywhere near enough, but it wouldn't hurt.

This morning, people in Haiti are awaking to the aftermath of a devastating 7.0 earthquake in their small, impoverished nation. Reports about the devastation are still sketchy after the quake hit at approximately 5 PM yesterday. One clinical health director in the capitol was quoted in the NY Times in an e-mail yesterday, “Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS . . . Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us.”

The National Palace has collapsed, the United Nations mission headquarters as well, giving one the impression that if these buildings have gone down, the condition of the average structure in the city must be even worse. A hospital collapsed in Petionville, one of the richest districts in Port-Au-Prince. There are fewer reports from the vast poor districts, where housing is not so well constructed.

The Huffington Post lists several relief organizations working in Haiti. The Sioux Fall, South Dakota Argus Leader reported on two groups, Helping Hands for Haiti and Kids Against Hunger, who were attempting to bring aid and food to Haiti when possible. One Helping Hands staffer, Dave Oswald, who returned last week from Haiti, is quoted as attempting to find his contacts, despite the lack of phone service to Haiti, to regain the ability to get food to people directly via commercial flights. He stressed the role of nonprofits as opposed to the Haitian government, which has a reputation for taking days or weeks to distribute aid and from which a significant portion is siphoned off by black marketeers.

The BBC calls Haiti "The Worst of Places for a Big Tremor," cting not only the nation's poverty, but also the relative lack of preparedness for infrequent quakes in the Caribbean. The last earthquake, in 1946 on the Dominican Republic's side of the island of Hispaniola it shares with Haiti, took almost 2,000 lives.

OK... this could be a little ray of sunshine. Probably little is the operative word, but little is better than none. The Senate will bring a jobs bill to the floor soon. The best news is that Byron Dorgan will co-write the bill. He's got nothing to lose by saying what he really thinks, having stepped back from seeking re-election.

The $174 billion House bill would provide some relief, but not the large program needed. One can hope the Senate can come somewhere near that, but it will doubtless be stuck short of a huge effort to end our rampant unemployment. Look for some way to make this bill into a deficit-neutral scenario instead of in-your-face help for the jobless.